With Love: From the Holy Spirit to the Sacred Heart

By Kitty Eisenbeil, Director of Formation

We did a remarkable thing, us women of the MCCW. Devoting time to prayer, specific time with specific intentions, for the sake of our beloved seminarians and promised priests, was a unique gift. This required sacrifice, some suffering, discomfort, and intentional thought and action. All for something of which we will most likely not see the fruits. It is beyond our time and space, the graces that will fill these young men for whom we prayed.

Let’s talk about how God uses time, space, tradition, and intentions. While we might say things just happened to line up, it is by no accident that we brought our 24-hours of prayer to reality on the feast of Pentecost, where we remembered how the disciples were enlivened with the Holy Spirit, their hearts set on fire with love, and finally found their way from their hiding places to reach the corners of the world to speak that love into the world. The Paraclete, literally meaning “to call alongside”, drew them out and walked with them as the Incarnate God once did, now exposing to them more fully what Divine Love is.

And here we have ended our call to support these young men, our seminarians, on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart. This devotion, brought into existence through St. Margaret Mary Alocoque, is a devotion to realizing absolute and all-encompassing love. When you read the autobiography of this saint, you may be struck with the suffering Christ spoke of to her.  Is this what He wants her to know about His heart? How He suffers? No. Not at all. He sets His Sacred Heart, one full of unending and exceedingly beautiful love, against the degradation of a sinful world. How clearly and magnificently it shines! The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) remarks on the Sacred Heart: “‘He has loved us all with a human heart.’ For this reason, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by our sins and for our salvation, ‘is quite rightly considered the chief sign and symbol of that… love with which the divine Redeemer continually loves the eternal Father and all human beings without exception” (#478). St Margaret Mary’s words barely touch it when she said, “Could you realize what happiness it is to love the Sacred Heart of Jesus, you would despise all else to love but it alone.” 

But why is this important in our call to pray for and support our priests? Do we know what we pray for when we ask God to bless our priests? A priest stands as the Person of Christ when he celebrates the sacraments. And this is not figurative speech; he literally is the channel by which Christ enters into our lives through baptism, confession, confirmation, marriage, holy orders, anointing of the sick, and, most frequently and expressly, the Eucharist. His hands, his mouth, his eyes, and his ears are used completely by Christ. So, what of his heart? Is not his heart transformed into the Sacred Heart? In order to unite himself fully with Christ, wouldn’t it seem best for him to take on the wounds of Christ, including His pierced heart? More importantly, when he takes on these wounds, does he not then take on that unending and divine love, which obliterates the sins of the world and gathers the beloved to His Heart?  Christ told St. Margaret Mary, “The infinite riches of My Heart will supply for and equalize everything.” When the heart of a priest is united in the Sacred Heart of Christ, he draws our hearts more perfectly to receive the infinite riches and be equalized in Christ.  

So we pray in a two-fold way: that the hearts of our priests and seminarians are united more perfectly in the Sacred Heart of Christ, and that the Holy Spirit will call them alongside Himself to love more perfectly the Beloved of Christ – His Bride – His Church, and all of us.

Want to read more?

• The Autobiography of Saint Margaret Mary

• Dear Father: A Message of Love for Priests by Catherine De Hueck Doherty